Medical Error is the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA

Medical error is # 3.
Medical malpractice is # 1.
It doesn't matter if it's hospital or CDC protocols.
"Just following orders" didn't cut it 75 years ago.

Medical errors and pharmaceutical side effects cause a lot of deaths.

Doctors evaluate a person's condition and use guidelines that are given to them to assess diseases to prescribe meds. Lots of different conditions share similar symptoms...good doctors who have time to assess a patient have less chance of screwing up with their educated guesses....which is what a diagnosis is.

Just because you go into the doctor one day because your heart is pounding hard does not mean that you need to be put on long term meds that have side effects. Sometimes things get out of whack and it causes side effects to occur for maybe a week, even a lop sided diet, like a deficiency in potassium or too much potassium can effect the heart but that just means you need to evaluate your diet better, some of these minerals are excreted in days leaving a temporary deficiency.

Other deficiencies, like B12 can take years of underconsumption of that vitamin to cause problems, and the symptoms of these deficiencies that are rarely tested for have the same side effects as other diseases which require long term meds to adjust enzymes and uptake of specific nutrients, or stop the body from excreting the stuff. How is a doctor going to know what is going on in a fifteen minute appointment, and how are blood tests going to properly evaluate what is going on in the extracellular and intracellular fluids of the body?

Doctors are not gods, they make a guess based on what they have been taught to look for, and tests are designed to take advantage of prescriptions being given, not getting rid of the disease or conditions. Doctors treat symptoms, they do not cure diseases most times and there is a big difference in treating symptoms and curing people.

I knew doctors, they told me how it is, most doctors will tell you what I said if you ask them. Most doctors are trying to help to releave your symptoms and are trying to use what they have been taught to try to help you. I have nothing against most doctors, only maybe five percent of them are dishonest or put gaining wealth ahead of helping people

originally posted by: dontneedaname
www.hopkinsmedicine.org...

you can find all sorts of articles related to this. So the question is why do so many people still think doctors, nurses are like "gods" (maybe a little strong word) or infallible?

Note: Paper is from 2016. Data is from FIFTEEN YEARS AGO "In their study, the researchers examined four separate studies that analyzed medical death rate data from 2000 to 2008"


...and only a very naive person would think that the study came out and insurance companies and hospitals ignored it. Because they didn't.


Having BEEN to medical school (for biomedical engineering, not doctorin'), I can tell you that human beings as a living organism are incredibly dodgy and inconsistent. The heart's on the left side of the body...until you run into someone with dexocardia where it's now on the right. Nerves aren't always in the same location on everyone. Veins and arteries are unexpectedly larger or smaller or in a different area because someone exercises or doesn't exercise.

Chemically, it's a very difficult balancing game. Your can live but only if your body is in a certain pH range. Meds that work on one person cause a horrible and deadly reaction in another person.

Bodies are inconsistent. My EKG shows an inverted T-wave which means "heart failure" except that I'm not in heart failure and the inverted T-wave only shows up occasionally and sometimes triggers tachycardia (rapid heart beat.) Problem is, you have to CATCH the lil' devil in action because it comes and goes rather randomly (as you might suspect, we've caught it and it's under strict watch.) But we only caught it thanks to my Fitbit.

And then there's the question of patient interactions: your patient says "doc, I don't feel good. My head hurts." Could be anything from tumors to muscle spasms to "got shot by a bb gun" or sinuses. You also get forgetful patients or those who forget to tell the doc about the OTC stuff they're taking.

Oh... and let's not forget things that patients eat or consume that change the way meds react (grapefruit is REALLY problematic for some meds.)

It's a team effort. Well educated people who understand how hospitals work and who monitor their health and who can give a good explanation of problems do well (or who have someone who can perform this function.)

It's a very stressful and difficult profession BUT so many survive because of modern medicine.


There are good docs and bad ones just as there are good cops and bad ones, good truck drivers and bad ones, good farmers and bad ones, good programmers and bad ones... and so on and so forth. Patients need to learn basic anatomy and physiology (so they can actually talk to the docs and understand what's going on) and need to learn how to present symptoms to the docs.

(and showing up, as many of you know, with a list of prescriptions and previous health issues along with monitoring data from a Fitbit or daily blood pressure data goes a LONG way towards helping find out what's wrong with you (even when you have a "medical zebra

originally posted by: Madviking
Aren't doctors mostly overglorified technicians? Many people imagine they are scientists and researchers, when really they are just learning the practice of being a doctor using prevailing medical knowledge. Many of them have far less research training and experience than I do, and I'm not a doctor. I mean methodology and design.

I wouldn't call them glorified technicians, but you are correct that they are not research scientists. However, they do have to keep up with the current practices (certification demands coursework every year). And the field is constantly changing.

Don't many of them uncritically download pharmaceutical company methods?

I wouldn't say "uncritically." BUT... in all fairness, the "critical" part comes when the FDA approves a certain treatment for a certain condition and rather than going back to the labs with the medication and running a thousand studies on their white rats, they accept what the FDA recommends.

FDA approval of treatments for the US is far slower than it is in Europe.

How many of them are utterly uncritical of Covid policies within hospitals?

If they don't like a hospital's policies, they won't send a patient there. Unless there's absolutely no place else.

Whatever "trust" I had in the FDA, has now gone to zero, actually negative. After the whole covid vax. And now especially with what I've learned about industrial vegetable oils / seed oils.

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn

originally posted by: dontneedaname

you can find all sorts of articles related to this. So the question is why do so many people still think doctors, nurses are like "gods" (maybe a little strong word) or infallible?

I have been in the medical field of Nursing for near fifty years. I have never been treated or thought of as a God. I have been the victim of assault on more than one occasion, and every single time, I was blindsided because I had done nothing to cause the assailant to assault me. Everytime it was a response to what someone else had done to them or because they were unhappy about a decision or result.

Nurses and doctors at one time may have been thought of, and treated with respect, but that was a very long time ago.

Most medical errors happen because medical personnel are overworked. Their hours are too long, and the patient ratio is ridiculously under staffed.

When I started out the nurse patient ratio in the units were one to one, sometimes two nurses to one patient if the case was complex enough. They increased it to two patients to one nurse. Then three to one. Some places are now as much as four to six to one.

I left floor nursing a long time ago because there was no way to prevent errors with that patient to staff ratio. I saw it was a straight path to losing my license, so I stepped away from direct hands on patient care. It has not gotten better, and it won't, as long as the industry continues to put profit over the patient.

Violence against nurses in their workplace is a major global problem that has received increased attention in recent years. 1 Approximately 25% of registered nurses report being physically assaulted by a patient or family member, while over 50% reported exposure to verbal abuse or bullying. 2 Nurses, who are primarily responsible for providing life‐saving care to patients are victimized at a significantly higher rate than other health‐care professionals, 3 and it is estimated that workplace violence causes 17.2% of nurses to leave their job every year. 4

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

I am so very glad you posted because every word is absolutely true.
About 10 or 12 years ago there were many blogs being written by Nurses and even Doctors who experienced the same situations and despite trying to change the system from within ended getting run over by it. These blogs were candid,
horrifying, & at times hilarious. There was Nurse K, Dr Whitecoat & The Angriest Pharmacist who now is no longer angry or as sarcastic. The WORST was The Happy Hospitalist who relished telling how to jack up billable's an was generally a horse's hind end. Despite keeping things anonymous many had to quit blogging to stay in the medical field.

I miss Nurse K the most.

originally posted by: zosimov

No one is asking anyone to be perfect but if you're donning a white coat and telling me to let you inject experimental gene therapy and that I can't do my own research you better be closer to perfection than I. And I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my job.

Well first it isn't gene therapy, so maybe research that part a little and not just run some talking point. You are also trying to combine a bunch of things here too. Relying on meds too much, Fauci saying follow the science when he isn't unless it matches his narratives, same as the crappy Goverment we have right now that is following something, but it isn't science, and then combining that with the doctors on the front line is not good and incorrect.

originally posted by: Ksihkehe

It can't be perfect, but if you want to go from perfect to 3rd leading cause of death I'd suggest you pack a lunch and bring gas money. It's not a short trip.

I think it is around 1% patients to some degree in hospitals, so yes I think very high, but medicine has gotten very complicated too over the years. How many people in the past died because the doctors really could not help them, or the doctor just didn't have all the knowledge available? In the recent past it was just the person died...

a reply to: Xtrozero

No, it's gene therapy. Which is fine. Nothing inherently wrong with that.

a reply to: dontneedaname

One reason is because a lot of doctors and nurses think of themselves as Gods. There is a thing called a God complex that describes it perfectly. I am, and will be for the rest of my life, living with complications from two botched surgeries. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it in the courts. Both of these events were avoidable. Both were, I believe, the direct result of a doctor (surgeon) believing he was better than he actually was.

Modern medicine in all its glory really only does one thing: it gives relief from symptoms, usually only temporary. It rarely cures anything and prevents even less. Modern medicine isn't really designed to cure people. It is designed to get you past the hard part and get you out the door as quickly as possible. Hospitals are for-profit businesses. Curing people means eliminating their repeat business. That doesn't sit will with big pharma who put a lot of money into hospitals as long as hospitals keep pushing their products. If hospitals started curing people demand for the pharmaceuticals would go down and the money flow would stop.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

The only doctors I have ever worked with that acted like they were Gods, were surgeons. And only a few of them acted that way.

Your average doctor is at the mercy of CMS and the insurance companies, as it has been made clearer with the recent events with COVID.

If doctors and nurses thought of themselves as Gods, they would not be in the position they are in, especially in America.

Some doctors and most nurses are treated like crap. They are over worked, poorly treated, and totally disrespected.

This nurse explains some of what is going on very well.

The U.S. healthcare system is on the verge of collapse, say our next guests. According to one poll, almost one in five healthcare workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic. Rachel Ellsworth is one such person. She abandoned her 12-year career because of burnout. Traveling nurse Chelsea Walsh has seen what hospitals are facing all across the country. They speak with Hari Sreenivasan about the loss of so many nurses and what can be done about it.

Pharmaceutical side effects.
look up fourniers gangrene, look up on google images if you have a strong stomach and jardiance (empagliflozin).
What the company calls the side effect
Severe infection in the perineum (the area between and around the anus and genitals).

It almost killed me, and that was in less than 8 hours from when i felt the first minor symptoms.
Had to have the infection removed by major surgery.
I spent almost 4 months in the hospital.

If anyone is on that class of diabetes meds get off them.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

None of this sounds like nurses are the ones that are playing God.